


Mothers Day

by Puregold



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Absent Parents, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Childhood, Dewey-centric, Family Drama, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Flashbacks, Freeform, Gen, I try to focus on the other kids too tho and their feelings abt not having a mom, adhd dewey but its not like a big theme I guess, also huey's autistic but its also not like. big in the story, donald said some things in the past that he regrets hes trying hes a single dad, fuck adhsdkghd, fuck.....theres so much good shit there...., the kids are like 8 in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 21:34:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20553044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Puregold/pseuds/Puregold
Summary: The boys never really had a mother growing up. They tried to ignore it, as bringing up the topic only ever seemed to make their Uncle Donald upset. Other kids talking about their families - two parent, mother and father households - never bothered them too much. But Mothers Day was always a particularly rough time for the family.





	Mothers Day

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry if this fic is kinda jumpy I just sorta ran with it tbh. Thats what you get for having ADHD laksdfhljkfsdh

Something always stirred deep in Dewey's gut whenever he saw the chocolates, cards and gifts that were on display at the store when Mother's Day rolled around. _"Get something sweet for your mom!"_, they'd say, and Dewey always promptly looked away, then to the floor in dismay. He'd often turn to his other brothers, curious if they were similarly disturbed, but if they were then they sure were good at hiding it. Louie often never looked up from his phone while they were at the store, bored out of his mind and annoyed that they had to go shopping with their uncle rather than stay at the houseboat. Huey's curious eyes were taking in everything around him, seemingly unaffected by the Mother's Day memorabilia. Maybe Uncle Donald noticed, though, because for his part he seemed to steer clear of the area.

Dewey had asked Uncle Donald about it once, when they were six. _"Where's our mom?"_ He had asked, simply enough. Donald froze like he was a deer caught in headlights, mumbled something to the effect of _"She's not... Here anymore."_ and left it at that. His answer had dissatisfied Dewey, but he decided to drop it.

Now it was a Friday at school, right before the weekend of Mother's Day, and they were instructed to make Mother's Day cards as they had every year. Louie always seemed to have a dark sense of humor about it, always drawing an invisible character on his cards and writing _"Happy Mother's Day! Wonder if you'll show up this year so I can at least give you the card?"_ It disturbed his teachers, and both disturbed and amused his fellow classmates and had resulted in a call to Uncle Donald at one point. When they got home, Dewey and Huey had been told to wait in their room while Uncle Donald chewed Louie out. As if that would stop them from listening in, however.

_"Why am I getting yelled at for this!? I'm just being honest!" Louie had said._

_"You can't just write things like that, Louie! It disturbs people!"_

_"Well, why? Why is it so bad, why does it disturb people? It's the truth!"_

_Uncle Donald froze for a moment, silent. "Louie... You can talk to me about your-" He hesitated, "Mom, y'know. You just can't go writing things like that at school."_

_"No I can't. I can't tell you about it, you get all weird." Louie huffed. "Whatever, I'm not gonna write it anymore, okay?..."_

_A tense silence passed between the two ducks, before Donald had finally replied with an "okay" and dismissed him. _

Louie had kept true to his word, and would now just write a cheesy one-liner about how much he loved his mom, glue some heart stickers to his card and be done with it. Then he would play on his phone for the rest of class so long as the teachers didn't catch him. 

__

Huey's cards were equally sad, in their own way, but less disturbing. More along the lines of _"Hi mom! Wish you were home :)"_, resulting in zero calls to Uncle Donald, yet weirdly sad smiles from his teachers and fellow classmates.

__

Dewey always made sure to go all-out and over-the-top with his cards. He decorated his cards full of glitter, glue and stickers and always drew a different portrait of his "mom". One year she was a dinosaur-cyborg hybrid, the next year a Mom-bot, and so forth. This year he drew her as a sci-fi action hero with laser eyes, and wrote a big, long description of how she wasn't home right now because she was busy saving the universe. He always showed off to his fellow classmates, while they talked about how their mom cooked homemade meals or tucked them in at night, or how they were at work as a teacher or banker or whatever, he would make up the craziest and most exciting stories possible to entertain. As they grew older, though, his stories would prove to be ineffective.

"That's fake." Chided one of his classmates.

For some reason, that struck a chord with Dewey. He knew the stories he told were fake, but it still hurt. "Well, how do you know?" He retorted.

"Because moms don't do stuff like that!" He replied. "Moms kiss you goodnight and read bedtime stories, and they cook and sing and help you with your math homework. They don't go to space and fight aliens."

"Well, she-" Dewey started. "My mom _would_ do stuff like that too, but she's too busy saving the universe to come home!"

"Then how do you know she does all that stuff?" He asked.

"I just _do!_ " He shouted, growing angrier the longer the conversation drew on.

"Alright, alright." Said the teacher before the situation could escalate. "Why don't we just go back to working on our cards, please?"

Dewey continued to color in silence for a few minutes, before Louie spoke up beside him. "I don't know why you say things like that."

Dewey eyed him suspiciously. "Say things like what?"

"Like our mom was an action hero, or whatever. It's not true, and _I'm_ the one who lies all the time, remember?"

"Yeah, well..." Dewey paused. "It's not like we know what's true anyways. Who's to say she isn't just... Out there doing a bunch of cool stuff?"

"Without us." Added Louie. "She left us, _that's_ what we know about her. Or she's dead."

Dewey shot upright in alarm as he glared at his younger brother. "Don't say things like that, Louie!"

"What? We _don't_ know where she is, or what she's doing! Maybe she is doing a bunch of cool stuff like you said, or maybe I'm right and she's dead. But it doesn't matter because we don't _know!_ "

Dewey punched his brother square in the jaw on impulse, so angry at his words that he saw red. Louie immediately retaliated by punching Dewey back, and soon enough the brothers were tackling each other, falling to the floor in the process. In the background the teacher was squawking indignantly, probably trying to get them to stop, and almost as soon as the fight began Huey was trying to pry himself between his brothers.

"You guys, stop it! What are you even fighting abo-" He was cut off by a smack to the jaw from Louie, causing him to bite his tongue hard enough to draw blood.

The siblings immediately parted, shocked gasps flying from them as they saw what they had done. Louie began sputtering out apologies to his oldest brother as he cupped his mouth and held back tears from the pain.

"I-I'm sorry Huey, I didn't see you-"

"Enough! You boys are coming with me to the principals office this instant." Chided the teacher as she ushered them out the room and nearly slammed the door behind her.

The walk there was tense, awkward and quiet as the teacher sat them down outside the principals office to wait before she swiftly went back to her class. The boys sat in silence as Huey held an ice pack to his jaw and tongue, shame heavy in the air.

"What were you two even fighting about anyway?" Huey asked, tired.

The two were silent for a while, and when it became obvious that Louie was going to keep it that way Dewey decided to speak up. "Mom."

"What about her?"

"Where she is, whether or not she's..." Dewey couldn't even bring himself to say it, the words caught in his throat as Louie unhelpfully finished his sentence.

"Dead."

The silence hung heavy for a while longer, before Huey spoke up. "We'll just have to ask Uncle Donald."

Louie laughed. "Are you kidding!? Uncle Donald gets all weird when we ask about her."

"Who cares!? She's our mom, not his!" Dewey objected.

"Right, but she is his sister. Of course it'd be hard for him to talk about her." Huey added.

"And if it's hard for him to talk about her, it means it's cause something bad happened." Louie unhelpfully supplies, and Dewey glares, about to argue back before the door to the principal's office opens.

They all sat in silence while the principal lectured them on their behavior, reflecting on what happened and how they were going to go forward. Obviously, their teacher would tell Uncle Donald after school and the boys would get in trouble. Dewey was more concerned about finding out about his mother than he was any type of punishment his Uncle Donald could think up. It didn't matter what the truth was- he just needed to know.

Sadly enough, Dewey didn't think that her being dead could be the worst possible thing for the truth to be. He thought it'd be worse if she had just left; had abandoned them. Because if she was dead it meant that she wanted them, but bad things happened that were out of her control. If she left, it meant she didn't want them, didn't want _Dewey_, and that almost broke his little heart.

The boys were sulking, sitting on the ground beside their teacher by the time Donald rolled over to pick them up. The teacher greeted him nicely before she started going off about the boys' behavior that day, almost seeming mad at Uncle Donald. Huey picked it up, her judgmental eyes scanning him over.

"And, pardon me," She added, attempting to lower her voice so the boys' couldn't hear. "But maybe it would do them some good to stay in a more... Stable environment? Y'know, there _is_ a crisis nursery in Duckberg. I have their pamphlet?"

The boys were alarmed and confused, watching as Uncle Donald's infamous temper flared behind his eyes. It was clear that he had to muscle through it, eye twitching as he struggled to grit his teeth and spit out a, "No. Thank you."

He then swiftly gathered the boys into his jalopy and sped off back the marina. The car ride was tense and silent as Donald worked through his anger, attempting to remain calm until they got to the house boat.

Once they had arrived and gotten inside, Donald spun around and faced the boys with an accusatory glare. "Who wants to explain to me why you all were fighting today?"

Huey spoke up immediately, hoping that if he started the conversation his brothers' wouldn't get mad again. "They were fighting about mom, and I got... Caught up when I intervened."

Donald looked shocked as he stood up straight, eyes scanning over Dewey and Louie. "About... your mom?"

"_Yes,_ " Dewey spat with a venom he didn't know he possessed. "Because you never tell us anything about her!"

Donald looked both guilty and angry as he replied, "Watch your tone! You still can't go fighting each other over this stuff!"

"He started it." Louie unhelpfully supplied before Dewey shot him an angry glare.

"No! You did! When you-"

"Enough! I don't care who started it! You may not have your mom but at least you have me! If you keep _fighting_ like this, they're going to take you away from me! Do you understand? Do you _want_ to be taken away?"

Louie immediately burst into tears at his Uncle's harsh words, shaking and sobbing into the sleeves of his hoodie, terrified of being 'taken away' as his uncle had implied. Donald immediately realized his mistake as he sunk to his knees in front of him and took his crying boy in his arms, holding him tight and rubbing hands over his back soothingly.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry, I didn't mean that. I didn't mean that, it's okay." He took a deep breath before gesturing to his other boys to come join the hug. Huey did so happily while Dewey still seemed like a ball of anger and sadness as he joined.

The four held each other like that for some time, until Louie's panicked sobs had finally died down. Then their Uncle Donald pulled away to look his boys in the eyes as he spoke.

"There was... An accident. Years ago, before you were hatched. Your mother, she-" Donald fought back the tears that were stubbornly making their way through him, catching him on a choked sob as he attempted to explain to the boys. "S-she disappeared. But she loved- she loved you boys so much-" Donald couldn't continue, sobs rushing through him now at an alarming rate.

The boys were frozen in shock as they stared at their uncle. They had never seen him cry before. Maybe when he had gotten injured a few times, but not like this. It hurt and terrified the boys in a unique way, at times they almost thought he _couldn't cry_. Seeing their Uncle, their father figure break down crying in front of them was almost frightening in how foreign it was.

"S-sorry, Uncle Donald." Dewey spoke, fiddling with his hands. "We didn't mean to upset you."

"Yeah, it's okay. I'm sorry too." Louie added, feeling strange at comforting his uncle.

Huey squeezed Uncle Donald tightly and gently patted his face, as he would do for his brothers when they were in need of comfort. "We won't be fighting about mom anymore, okay?"

Donald nodded, reciprocating Huey's hug before he stood and wiped the tears from his eyes. "I've got groceries to bring inside." He said simply before walking out the front door and back to his jalopy.

The boys stood together in silence, glancing at each other in confusion.

"Well... Guess we know what happened." Louie said awkwardly.

But they _didn't_, thought Dewey. 'Disappeared' meant nothing- it meant she was still out there, somewhere. It meant that she loved them but something or someone was keeping her away, and Dewey couldn't bare the thought. He loved his Uncle Donald- but as selfish as it was he wanted a mom, especially now that he knew she was out there somewhere.

As the boys went to bed that night, Dewey laid awake. _I'll find you, mom,_ he thought to himself. _I promise_


End file.
